


Every Picture Hides a Secret Sorrow

by MistyBeethoven



Category: Barton Fink (1991)
Genre: Beaches, Birds, F/M, Meditation, Ocean, Pain, Sorrow, Strangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22131343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: You can meet a stranger on the beach with tall hair and glasses. You can sense that his sorrow mirrors your own but it's probably best not to share your trouble with each other for the fear that in doing so you risk doubling the sadness of the world.Maybe it's best just to stare out across the water and remember that even pictures can lie.
Relationships: Barton Fink/Girl on Beach
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Every Picture Hides a Secret Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> I just rewatched this film on Saturday night and I still am in love with it. The whole ending from after the USO dancehall fight to the beach scene is one of my favorite endings of all time. It is dark, surreal and ambiguous. It's cathartic for me (which may say a lot about my frame of mind unfortunately) in it's kind of honest truth about the pain and unfairness of life.
> 
> And about how even pretty pictures hide their own pain.

I see him walking towards me, and although I don't feel very much like company today, he looks rather sweet and kind in his own way so I continue walking towards the place that waits for me patiently. The man, this stranger with his brown suit, tall hair and glasses, also continues his trek in the sand and when we find our places on the grains of it which have collected together to create the beach itself we make a bit of small talk.

We don't talk about our pain but I feel that it's rather obvious that it exists. Maybe talking of it wouldn't make either of us feel better anyway but only make it grow until it is like those same grains of sand which we are sitting on. If you tell your sadness to a person whom understands then they feel it also and it becomes their own. So all you did in the end was make somebody else that suffers carry around another bit of pain.

Just as this man in his brown suit carries around a strange plain paper and string wrapped box with him.

The alternative, of course, is to tell your story to somebody that doesn't give a damn. But that's suicide. You risk them mocking you for what almost destroyed you, and may still if you let it. Or you run the risk of dying under the gaze of someone whom simply cannot understand your pain, possessing no empathy to know why you are suffering.

So instead of adding to this stranger's woes, and the world's ever growing ones as well, I ask him a few questions that he cannot seem to answer. I like that he doesn't know and is _honest_ about _not_ knowing: The man who can admit that he doesn't know something is a hell of a lot better than the one who thinks that he knows everything.

He tells me that I'm beautiful and this I don't like as much. As if beauty solves anything or is worth much in the end. It's never brought me a single joy to count on but, like telling your troubles to someone who truly cares, only seems to add to it. The beauty of something that cannot care or love seems far better than a beauty which can be wounded.

I turn to look at the water instead which cannot suffer. And even if it does, it will never be able or tempted to share that pain. I offer my new and hurting friend, with the hair which reaches for heaven, a view of my back and the ocean and sky set before me. It's a view that he probably thinks is as pretty as a picture that would hang on a hotel room somewhere and offer to a guest some kind of escape or peace of mind.

Right then a seagull loses its life as it flies in that picture perfect sky and crashes into the tranquil water beneath it.

I guess, even pictures can lie and break your heart when you realize that they aren't as perfect as you first believed.

And that they hide their own secret tragedies and sorrows too.


End file.
